by Mal Peet
Gato was silent for a moment, and then he said, “But there was one thing that did make me feel homesick. If that’s the word for it. Sad, confused, anyway. Do you know San Juan, Paul?”
Faustino pulled a face. “Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “It stinks. I prefer cities that know the difference between a sewer and a street.”
The keeper laughed. “That’s the Old City you’re talking about, the port. But between the Old City and the New City there’s what people in San Juan call the Park. About a hundred years ago the Old City got too small for all the people who swarmed in it, so they hacked away the forest behind the port and started to build the New City. But they decided to leave a chunk of the forest alone, a sort of breathing space between the filthy Old City and the clean New City. They built a cage of railings around it. So now there is a piece — a very big piece, in fact — of wilderness imprisoned within the city. Monkeys, birds, butterflies, live in this prison. That’s where Cesar and his wife took me on my second day in San Juan. They thought I’d be glad to see it. In fact, the Park was like a joke about my life and my father’s life. A fake wilderness with asphalt paths and picnic tables and litter. It made me squirm like a worm on a hook. All the same, I went there quite often, just to remind myself of what the sky looks like when you see it through a web of trees. And every time I went there, yes, I did feel homesick.”
Faustino thought, Yes, I could make something of this. A piece to touch the reader’s heart. Need more facts, though. So he said, “Tell me about your day-to-day life in San Juan, Gato. You were under contract. What did you have to do? What do kids who belong to soccer clubs actually do?”
“To my great surprise,” Gato said, “we went to school. Every morning, five days a week.”
“Soccer school?”
“No, proper school. Math, writing, science, history. My mother was delighted when I wrote and told her this. She had thought that soccer and education were enemies. She’d thought that when my father wrote his slow name on Señora da Silva’s contract he had sentenced me to two years of stupidity. She was very happy to learn from me that I was receiving an education, free.”
“And were you?”
“No. The year I went to DSJ there were eighteen other boys like me. Boys from all over the country. From small towns, from city slums, from the kind of backwoods place I was from. Of those eighteen, ten had never held books in their hands. They could have recited the names of the Boca Juniors team of 1976 but couldn’t have read those same names from a piece of paper. I sat in classes where we were taught the alphabet.”
Faustino could imagine a big, smart kid sitting in a schoolroom trying not to look too clever while his classmates grappled with the simplest structures of their own language.
“So did you learn anything?”
“Yes. I learned to be quiet. I learned to watch. I learned that it was perfectly possible for someone to be an idiot in the classroom and a genius on the field.”
Faustino, smoking, considered this for a moment or two. Then he said, “And after school?”
Gato said, “Two afternoons a week we worked as drudges. Cleaning, sorting gear, following the groundsmen around, carrying equipment from one place to another, being yelled at, sweeping, running errands. Three afternoons a week we trained. Hard. Milton Acuna was in charge of the Junior training program, and he didn’t pull any punches. He was fierce. I was okay with this, because he wasn’t as hard as the Keeper. Some of the other boys suffered though.”
“Were you the only keeper among the Juniors?”
“That year, yes. That meant that sometimes I worked with the first team goalie, Pablo Laval, and also with his understudy, Ramos.”
Faustino leaned back in his chair so that his face went out of the lamplight. “I knew Pablo quite well,” he said. “In fact, he was the first person who told me about you. He was a fine keeper. Did you have a good relationship with him? I ask this because you took his place on the DSJ team, and he never got it back. That must have been tough on him.”
“I would not have taken his place if he hadn’t fractured his collarbone in a Cup-tie against Palominas. Pablo was excellent. It was an education, watching him play. He was very generous toward me. I had no problem with Pablo.”
Faustino leaned forward and said, “I interviewed Pablo Laval when he announced his retirement. I remember what he said. He said, ‘At halftime, in that first senior game the kid Gato played, I knew I was finished. I saw that the lad knew more about keeping goal than I ever would. I knew I’d never get my place back.’ Okay, he was thirty-two years old, but he didn’t have to quit. But he did, right then. And it must have hurt him.”
El Gato then also leaned into the light and looked his friend square in the face. “I tell you again, Paul: I had no problem with Pablo. After that game, he took me down to the locker room and gave me his shirt. It was a sort of ritual. He said that the number 1 was mine now. I said that I had only played one good game and he had played hundreds. I said that I could not take the shirt. But you know Pablo. He doesn’t take no for an answer. He made me take off my number 23 shirt and put on his. While my head was still inside the shirt I heard the locker-room door slam. I pulled the shirt down over my head and turned around to look where Pablo was looking. It was Ramos, still in the full uniform he had been wearing as he’d sat on the substitutes’ bench.”
“Ah,” Faustino said, “Ramos. I was going to ask. You were, what, just sixteen at the time? The youngest team member ever to play for the DSJ Seniors. And Ramos had been Pablo’s deputy for something like two years, am I right? And you’d been chosen over him. I take it he was not pleased.”
“He hated me,” Gato said flatly.
“Imagine that,” said Faustino.
“As a keeper, Ramos was okay. But he was moody, and often reckless. He had a mean streak. He’d earned a lot of yellow cards in a fairly short career. And when he came into the locker room and saw me in Pablo’s shirt, he went off like a volcano. I think he’d have killed me if Pablo, with his one good arm, hadn’t grabbed him by the throat and pinned him against the wall.”
Gato paused, remembering. “In fact, not long after that, he did try to kill me. To have me killed, anyway.”
Faustino sat up straight. “You’re kidding.”
“You must not print this, Paul, because I couldn’t prove it. But I know it was Ramos.”
“What happened?”
“Well,” El Gato said, “I kept my place on the team. I was all over the newspapers. Ramos was insane with resentment. He had more poison in him than a pit viper. When one newspaper interviewed me, I was careful to say good things about him, and that made matters worse, if anything. Anyway, one Sunday I went into the city by myself and went into the Park. The cleared areas were full of families having picnics. I guess I was feeling lonely. I walked a long way into the trees along narrow paths until I could no longer hear voices. I started to feel both at home and homesick.
I stopped and leaned against the mossy ribs of a great cinchona tree and peered into the beautiful gloom of this imprisoned jungle. I was thinking about the Keeper, of course, imagining him, waiting . . . And then I saw him. I saw him begin to materialize out of the dark ferns and creepers. I was overjoyed, just for a second or two. But then I saw that he was in great distress. He seemed to be struggling to make himself real, to stay visible. He flickered in and out of focus, never quite there, like a film projected onto glass. I could see, though, that he was pointing — at me, I thought — and that his mouth was moving, twisting. He was trying desperately to speak, but no words came. I don’t understand how, but I suddenly realized that he was trying to warn me. I pushed away from the tree and turned, fast.
The two guys were about ten yards from me. They weren’t much more than kids, really. A year or two older than me. Pale, skinny kids with long hair. They wouldn’t have been particularly frightening if it hadn’t been for the long narrow-bladed knives they were carrying. We faced each other, frozen, for a heartbea
t. Then they came at me, and I started to run. I ran off the path straight into the dark heart of the forest. Something, some memory or instinct, must have kept me from stumbling. They came in there after me, but not very far. They were city boys and wouldn’t have liked cobwebs on their faces or the thought of slithery things in dark places. Their crashing and cursing faded away behind me. Eventually I felt safe enough to stop. When my heart and breathing had steadied, I moved cautiously toward the distant sound of traffic. After twenty minutes I came out onto the boulevard between the Park and the Old City.”
“Jesus,” Faustino said. “And you reckon these guys weren’t just ordinary muggers? Junkies? What makes you sure that Ramos had sent them after you?”
“When I reported for training on Monday afternoon, Ramos was getting out of his car. The look on his face when he saw me told me everything. And he knew that I knew.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was transferred before the end of the season,” Gato said. “The last I heard, he was playing in Colombia. But that was years ago.”
“And you remained DSJ first keeper for the rest of the season,” Faustino said. “And as they say, the rest is history. I have it here.”
He got up and went across his office, opened a door, and flicked a light switch. Turning in his chair, El Gato saw that the door opened into a smaller room with no window. The two walls he could see were lined with shelves crammed with files and scrapbooks and cardboard folders stuffed with paper. Faustino said, “My colleagues call this the Paul Faustino Library of Useless Knowledge. They fail to understand that no knowledge is useless. They also fail to understand my filing system. That’s because there isn’t one.” He disappeared into the room, then emerged again carrying three enormous, old-fashioned box files. Each one had a label on which El Gato had been written with a fat, felt-tipped pen.
“My God,” the goalkeeper said.
“Oh, this isn’t all of it,” Faustino said. “The rest is on that computer there. One day I’ll pay one of those nerds from downstairs to put all this on disk. Then I’ll never be able to find anything, but it’ll all be very well organized.” “This is the earlier stuff. Everything I could find over the years, some of it written by me. Those are the best bits, naturally.”
Faustino rested his hand on the files. “These are in chronological order. Well, more or less.” He flipped open the lid of the first file and riffled through the collection of newspaper clippings, press releases, and pictures. Gato glimpsed a photo of the boy he had once been. “So,” Faustino continued, “this is stuff about that first season of yours as the DSJ keeper. The team finished third. Best position for, what, a hundred years?”
“Twelve, actually,” the keeper said, smiling.
“And at the end of the next season, champions. Amazing. You are voted National Player of the Year. And so it goes on. You sign with DSJ for another two years.”
Faustino stopped, looked up at Gato. “Why?” he asked. “There were bigger clubs wanting to buy you. Foreign clubs, too. Juventus, Chelsea, Atlético Madrid. But you chose to stay in godforsaken San Juan.”
The big goalkeeper shrugged. “Milton Acuna was persuasive,” he said. “He told me that yes, one day I should go to play in Europe but that, in his opinion, I was too young. I respected him. And the club offered me good money. Besides, there was my family. I was not happy at the thought of half the world separating me from them.”
This was not quite good enough for the journalist. “And it was something to do with the Keeper, perhaps? You told me that in the San Juan Park, when he half appeared to you, he seemed to be struggling to get there. Did you think there was a limit to his range, or something like that? That if you went farther away he wouldn’t be able to reach you? Or maybe that he couldn’t communicate with you if there wasn’t a chunk of your beloved rainforest handy? Was that it?”
El Gato thought about this and eventually said, “Paul, the Keeper comes with me here.” He touched his forehead with two fingers. “I haven’t seen him in the flesh for years, as I have told you.” He smiled. “Those are the wrong words, ‘in the flesh,’ but you know what I mean.”
Faustino looked hard at his friend and decided to drop the subject. He went back to the file.
“National Player of the Year the next season, too. DSJ wins the championship, blah, blah, next season they win the Cup, blah, blah. Then, at the great age of twenty, you sign for Unita and go to Italy. And in your very first season, Unita wins the European Cup.”
Faustino lifted away the top file and flipped open the next. He took out an eight-by-four glossy black-and-white photograph. “This,” he said, “is, in my opinion, one of the great pictures of all time. I’ll use it in the article.”
The photograph showed Gato lifting the European Cup above his head. How young, how triumphant, he looked! The Cup — more like a huge vase, in fact — seemed to beam the flashes of a thousand cameras down onto the young keeper’s face, giving it the radiance you normally see only in paintings of saints. A photo full of joy.
At the sight of the picture, El Gato’s face turned to stone. He pushed his chair back, went to the window, and spread his huge hands on the pane. He stood like that for perhaps half a minute; then he put his hands into his pockets and leaned his forehead against the glass.
Faustino looked at his friend’s broad back and then down at the photo. What the hell was this, now? He reached toward the stop button of the tape recorder, then changed his mind. He waited a few moments and then simply said, “Gato?” The goalie didn’t move. “Gato? I don’t know what the problem is. Are you going to tell me?”
Gato turned his back on the window. “Do me a favor, Paul,” he said. “Don’t use that damned photo. I never want to see it again.”
Faustino looked from his friend to the photograph and could think of nothing to say.
The goalkeeper walked across Faustino’s office and back again, then sat down in his chair. He didn’t speak, so Faustino lit a cigarette, slowly, and said, “Tell me, please, my friend,” blowing blue smoke into the yellow cone of the lamplight.
El Gato stared at the surface of the table and said, “That moment, that moment in that picture, was magical. Soon afterward, it became bitter. We’d won the European Cup, and Giorgio Massini handed it straight to me. We had a wild time that night, believe me. It was well after eight o’clock when the TV and the papers and everyone had finished with us, and then we went out on the town. We flew back to Rome the following day, all of us a bit the worse for wear, but still very, very high. At the airport, we were met by two open-top buses painted in the Unita colors and paraded through the streets, Massini and me in the front of the first bus with the Cup. Amazing scenes. Flowers, clothes, banners, money thrown at us. Fantastic. We ended up at some flash hotel or other. We did a press conference, interviews, photos. After all of that, most of the players went to their homes, wives, families, girlfriends, whatever. I was exhausted. I decided to stay at the hotel. I ate some food in my room and went to bed.”
Faustino had been at that press conference, but this did not seem the right moment to mention the fact.
“I slept like someone who had died,” Gato continued, “so when the hammering at the door started at seven the next morning it took me some time to come around. I stumbled out of bed and opened the door. A small woman stood there, fiddling anxiously with a large bunch of keys. She spoke urgently to me in Italian, pointing to the telephone beside my bed. I’d pulled the plug out of the socket before I’d gone to sleep — I hadn’t fancied reporters calling in the middle of the night. I plugged the wire back in and picked up the phone. Someone said something in Italian, then a distant, distorted voice came through. I wasn’t wide awake, and for just a moment I thought that it was the Keeper, even though the idea of him using a telephone made no sense at all. But there was an echo on the line, a shadow to the voice, that made me think it might be him, and although I knew the voice I didn’t recognize it.
It said,
‘Gato? Is that you, Gato? This is Ernst Hellman.’ Hellman! Oddly enough, my initial thought was that I’d never known his first name.
I said something like, ‘Señor Hellman, it is nice of you to call.’ I thought he was phoning to congratulate me.
‘Thank God,’ Hellman said. ‘It’s taken me three hours and sixteen calls to find you.’
I began to get a nasty feeling, a sort of cold sickness.
‘Is everything all right, Señor Hellman?’
Hellman didn’t reply right away. I listened to the sound, like the wind, in the phone. Then he said, in his blunt way, ‘No. Listen, Gato. There has been an accident.’
Then I knew.
‘My father.’ It was all I could do to speak just those two words.
‘Yah, Gato. Your father. It’s a terrible thing, telling you this. This day, of all days. He is dead, Gato. He was killed this morning.’
So I went home. It took me sixty-two hours.”
“AFTER THE FUNERAL, in a long conversation with Hell man, I found out what had happened, more or less.
The Cup final had been an evening game in Holland, so the live TV coverage back home had kicked off at about two in the afternoon. It was a Wednesday, but Hellman had given everyone the afternoon off. I imagine he’d done some impressive yelling into that phone of his to swing that with head office.
Several families in the town, including mine, had TV now, but of course the only place to be for the game was in the café, where they’d rigged up two extra sets, big ones. The men swarmed in, still in their work clothes and filthy boots, yelling for beer. My father had pride of place, a chair in front of the TV nearest the bar. Some of the men were already tipsy by the time the priest squeezed his way through the crowd and climbed onto a table. He made a little speech, saying that it was good to see so many men gathered in one place to witness something they were passionate about. He said he looked forward to the same thing happening in his church one day. But, he said, this was a great event for the town, and especially for one of its families. Then he said a prayer for me, warned the crowd about the dangers of drink, ordered a glass of red wine, and settled down to watch the game.